All Forum Posts by: Brian Mathews

I'll let you in on the little hvac secret about the "New" refrigerant that has been around for 15 years. They still sell dry R22 units. They come with no refrigerant in them, you charge them when you buy them. There are a few alternative refrigerants to R22 which are cheaper and work the same. If you go with R410 (new) refrigerant, there is absolutely no reason to change the lines unless they are too small. I have literally changed hundreds of units from 22 to 410 and have never replaced the lines unless they were too small. As long as they are blown out with nitrogen and a filter dryer installed, you will be fine. If anybody tells you different, they are full of crap. All the compressor manufacturers have said the same thing. As far as the coil on the inside. If it has a piston for a metering device, you will be fine. If you are using a txv, just make sure it is changed to one for the 410 refrigerant. The coils don't matter unless they are really old, then you might consider changing, but if within last 10 years, just change txv.

I hope so. I drove through there last week. What a friggin' disaster. No major construction there yet. It's all west of there. So I'm not holding my breath, you figure the disaster that is there coupled with the construction mess will be horrible. Once they start, you have 1-2 years of mess depending on the magnitude of the project. We'll have another recession and come out of it before anything gets done with the way Austin moves. They'll find a cricket or lizard and have to do 5 year environmental study first.

I agree that San Marcos is its own world. I lived there many years ago and it's a college/recreational town. Kyle/Buda growing rapidly, will be a Round Rock sort of market. But still a little far out to downtown Austin. Dripping Springs will depend on how the highway goes. Austin isn't very good about highway planning as we all know. Same with Lakeway, lots of new lots and roads, but still only 620, Bee Caves Rd and 71 running into 290 to get out, which affect Dripping Springs growth. Traffic is horrible out there. Cedar Park is good, but only so much room for growth, Leander/Liberty Hill lots of room, but no infrastructure to support growth in water/sewage. The toll road that way will help a lot and will be poised for middle class growth in next few years. Georgetown primarily old school and Sun City there, they don't put up with a lot of crap there and never have, so I don't see huge growth. Jarrell kinda far out. Round Rock landlocked except in northeast side where growth is happening right now. Lots of large apartment complexes in last 5 years, getting more run down. I know cause I live in Round Rock, the quality of people has gone down. Hutto no infrastructure like Liberty Hill area, but poised for growth, just run poorly. It was a very small town and has experienced great growth, just gotta see how they handle it. Lots of room to grow. Taylor/Elgin/Manor dumpy towns. Pflugerville in growth state, but they seem lost. Landlocked to apoint, they can go across toll 130. Just doesn't seem to have good leadership, lots of squabbles about water.
I guess it really depends on what your goals are. Who are you marketing to or what do you want to accomplish. The markets are different. Its my opinion from what I see driving around everyday.

I'm not sure either. I don't think they will give you money to buy a home. You might be able to get some grants or low interest funding for serving lower income areas, but not for you to live in. If you don't pay, it will get repo'd.

Austin got hit some, but not as hard as other areas. The tract builders definitely ground to a halt. Custom building cut in half, high end stuff not as much. At least in my little world that I work in. Oil and gas definitely helping other areas of Texas, Austin not so much. We don't have much to drill at around here and Houston has the refinery's.

I always liked David. I thought Armando was the jerk. They do remodeling in San Antonio as well I think.

I'm with you Jean. I'm in Round Rock and there are some good deals around if you look hard enough. Some of them are good deals for a reason such as Manor. The nice thing about working outside Austin is not having to deal with red tape and beauracratic crap that comes with Austin. You can easily add several hundred to several thousand dollars in permitting and extra work involved by the trades just being in Austin and depending on what you do.

Alphabetization makes no difference on the web. It doesn't pick based upon letters. It will pick based upon keywords used on your site and matches. There are a bunch of companies out there that will promise you the world, get you listed on the first page of Google, etc... For a few hundred a month that will likely result in nothing. If you want a website, my advice would be to find somebody local and work with them. I think that if you're looking for properties, you would be wiser in guerrilla marketing. Pounding the pavement, passing out cards, networking with real estate professionals, etc... You have to look at what would you do if you were in the situation of your potential customers. If it were me. I'd find a realtor to list my house first. You have to find a way to get between the person and the realtor and your competition for these houses on the web is a realty company with huge pockets to buy the first page on Google. As for a name, you need to come up with a name that is easy to remember, maybe a bit catchy. You need a brand, not a name.

I will give you my perspective and the other end of the home warranty. That of the hvac contractor. I've done work for 2 companies just to try them out and know many people who have worked for them. It seems to be pretty consistent from company to company, some better some worse. First of all, they are very hard to collect any money from. You pay the service call of $65 or whatever it is. Some of the warranty company's offer to reimburse anything above them, which is like pulling teeth from a toothless man, impossible. Others just don't pay the contractor anything aside from that $65, so they have to be creative to try to cover their overhead, cause $65 doesn't pay for anything on my end except gas in truck, a low paid person, therefore not very skilled driving it and insurance. Most people who do it, don't do it for very long. Usually anybody who has done it for any length of time is what I call a bottom feeder in the hvac world. You are getting the worst and biggest rip off artists, doing it honestly for any length of time, you go broke. Just my 2 cents for what its worth.

I don't know about your area and I'm far from an expert, but I see a downturn in the amount you can charge for rents in the next few years or at least stagnate. My reason for thinking this is that real estate is re-bounding, at least here. I'm not sure banks learned their lesson and with interest rates low, loans will start flowing again, if they're not already. Even if lending stays a little harder, a lot of the people who got repo'd, credit will start cleaning up and they will qualify again, not too mention theoretically their incomes should have increased through the last few years riding out repo. I had a personal bankruptcy years ago, before crash, wife got hurt, I lost job and insurmountable medical bills. I was able to re-finance house a year later and buy a gently used car. Memories are short. Keep that in mind when thinking rents will stay where they are or increase. I honestly think you can't afford another house, stay put, pay down debt and accumulate some cash in the bank.